Update time!

So I've been in New Zealand for the roughly the past 2 weeks now and am just heading upwards to the north island tomorrow. I believe I last did a blog in Airlie Beach after finishing my Whitsunday Sailing, so I'll pick up from there.

After leaving Airlie, we went on to Mission Beach where I did a very cool day of white water rafting on the Tully river. The thing that made it proper awesome was the fact that the company that ran the rafting owns the dam that feeds the river so all they do is open the sluices and you are ensured a day of level 4/5 rapids! Anyway, did some pretty neat things on the river including flipping the raft and swimming down the rapids, picked up a dvd of it all so I'll try and find some way of ripping that online when I get home. Only had one night in Mission Beach but it was a very cool place and I would have liked to spend a little bit longer there doing fishing, diving, etc but the next day I had to head off to....

Cairns! We arrived here late in the afternoon and were all feeling pretty tired and hungover so had a pretty quiet first night in Cairns. The next day I was up early to head out on my boat "Reef Explorer" out to the Great Barrier Reef to do some snorkelling and also some more diving. So I spent the day out on the boat and the weather held up nice enough for me to do some diving. I was under for about 45 minutes this time and saw some pretty cool reef formations and touched some Giant Clams, (and when I say giant I mean giant, they were easily as big as 6ft) as well as sea cucumbers, and some of the coral that you were allowed to touch. It was also my last day with everyone I had been travelling with for in some cases the past 4 months, and later that day some of the guys we had met in Asia from the Intrepid trip were arriving so we all met up for some drinks and went out into town for a big night out. The next day I made my way back to Sydney for a couple of days and hung out with some friends before flying out to Christchurch on the 30th June.

Originally I had intended to spend 3 nights in Christchurch at a hostel called the Jailhouse which was a converted Jail (very cool hostel) in order to take some time to orientate myself, plan my trip in NZ and book anything that needed booking but... I came down almost immediately with a touch of flu so I ended up spending 7 days in ChCh doing pretty much nothing at all except feel ill and sorry for myself! Anyway, eventually I managed to get out of ChCh and took the Tranzalpine through the mountains and over to Greymouth on the west coast of NZ. The scenery on the train was absolutely stunning and I knew that it was only the start of some fantastic scenery along my NZ travels. I had one night booked for Greymouth before catching the bus down to the Franz Josef glacier where I splashed out a bit and did the Heli-Hike (where you catch a 20 minute helicopter ride to more remote areas of the glacier before doing some hiking there). The helicopter ride was amazing and the pilot did some tricks and drops before landing on the ice heli-pad. We had to put crampons onto our shoes so that we would be able to walk on the glacier and then we were off for a 2 hour walk through various parts of the glacier. What was pretty cool was that you could hear the glacier moving (up to 6 metres over the course of a day) and see parts of it break away as it slowly moved over the rock. But the formations within the glacier itself was amazing, and went through a couple of ice tunnels, down some crevasses and through the 'sewage pipe' where the melted ice flows down to the bottom of the glacier creating a river that runs out towards the town. There was also plenty of the blue ice you sometimes see in pictures of glaciers and this is where there is a high oxygen content in the ice. What was also pretty cool was that we could drink the water off the glacier, so I found a nice bit of the ice which had a stream of water flowing over it and filled up my water bottle with ice cold glacier water! Beat that Evian.

The next day I had an early start on the bus heading to Queenstown, the 'adventure capital of the world'. On the way I stopped at Lake Matheson which is a highly reflective lake that captures some of the southern alps. Again, the view from the lake was absolutely amazing. Later on that day I arrived in Queenstown booked in for 3 nights. I had previously been told that Queenstown was very busy at the moment so to book ahead, but even still a lot of the hostels were fully booked and I was getting a bit worried about having to cash up to stay in a motel or something. Fortunately I found a hostel called Scallywags with 'amazing views over town'. Indeed, it did have nice views but it was about 2 miles outside of town, but the place was pretty nice and the people staying there were all cool too. So on my first full day at Queenstown I had signed up for a day trip out to Milford Sounds which is a 4 hour bus journey there, then a 3 hour boat cruise before heading back. The drive itself was again, stunning, and the mountains, lakes and U-shape valleys like something out of a film (Lord of the Rings anyone?). The boat cruise as well was very spectacular with waterfalls and huge towering cliffs all around you and I also managed to spot some seals at some points. After arriving back at the hostel, I had time for a quick shower and dinner before heading out into town with some guys from the hostel and to meet some other people I had met on my bus earlier for a night out in Queenstown. I spent the next day taking some time to have a rest and do some things that didnt take all day or require waking up at 6am, so did the Shotover Jet thing which was okay.

After a few days in Queenstown I was off to Dunedin for a night to check out that place. Unforuntately there was not much there execpt for a Cadburys World so me and a few people off the bus went to that for an hour or so before heading back to the hostel for dinner. The next day we arrived in a place called Lake Tekapo which was a very picturesque place, but very very cold. It also didnt help with the fact that the entire town (of about 7 buildings) had a power cut and so my hostel had no heating or cooking facilities for a couple of hours. Ended up sleeping fully clothed in my bed and waking up to find that it was -9 outside and wabout -8 inside my room!

Leaving Lake Tekapo I headed back to Christchurch for a night, staying somewhere different to the Jailhouse this time around. Went out with a few people from my hostel for a couple of bevvies then back to the hostel for bed. The next day picked up the bus again to Kaikoura for a spot of whale watching, but when I arrived today the weather was too bad for the boats to go out into the ocean so that was cancelled. Oh well, at least thats $140 saved. Tonight I'm going out for some dinner with some people off the bus and then off tomorrow to Wellington, the capital of New Zealand to check out what there is to do there!

Anyway, I'll probably do another blog once I've arrived in America for my last leg of travelling!

Adios